Expert Yogi
Posts: 5098
 
Location: Somewhere in the Mountains of Western NC | an interview with John Daido Loori, Roshi. Founder of the famous Zen Mountain Monastery
I was reading this interview this morning. This particular section was really interesting. So, therefore I am posting this for interesting reading. The part that got my attention was the question at the end about the relationship between the body and thinking. Which prompted me to think about how that relates to my yoga experience. This is a great article and I only gave you a small portion of the entire interview.
Interviewer:
Our culture is very intellectual, and we're all trained to verbalize. We use words to avoid experience. There is an internal mechanism in place, to "know" things immediately, to put words to experiences, so we don't have to be with the preverbal experience.
JDL: You're absolutley right. One of the difficulties of being a teacher in the West....I have problems that these ancient teachers never had. Half of my students are doctors of something. They're well educated, well read, and they know more about Buddhism than I do. The stuff they read is unbelievable. And so they tend to crouch everything in an intellectual paradigm, and I'm trying to get them to embody what they're talking about.
Sometimes very intellectual people tend not to be tactile, or feeling. Men in particular. I have one student who is so bright. He's so sincere. He's a philosophy major. I realized the other day, when he became my attendant, that he couldn't get simple movements down, like putting down a cup. He'd get all confused about it. And when I ws following him out, I was watching the way he was walking. He wasn't in possession of his body. [JDLoori stands up and demonstrates by walking stiffly, awkwardly.]
Interviewer:
He was holding on really tight.
JDL:
He was very tight. And I said to him, "I want you to start playing frisbee with the other guys. And I'd like you to start playing basketball. And your instructions are, you have to beat Hogan." Hogan is one of my senior monks who is an 'animal'. [Laughter] "You have to beat him one-on-one." Because I think that's why we do body practice, to help people embody a lot of things that they just hold on to in their intellect.
Interviewer:
What is the relationship between the body and thinking?
JBL: They're the same thing. Body and mind are one. Same reality. |
An interview with a Zen Priest
